The total cost to the province for the Basi-Virk case so far is $17.3 million – and counting.
Most of that amount has been taken up in $13.6 million worth of defence and prosecution legal fees.
The bill for the defence has been $6 million and the aggregate costs for special prosecutor Bill Berardino stand at $7,653,229, according to figures released Friday by the criminal justice branch of the attorney-general’s ministry.
“The branch anticipates that we will receive some additional invoices and that additional costs will be incurred in relation to the special prosecutor, however we are not able to quantify those at this point,” said a statement released by Neil MacKenzie, the branch’s spokesman.
The defence and special prosecutor are headed back to court Feb. 16 to deal with an application by the prosecutor to have the defence return all of the Crown disclosure.
The costs for Berardino, who has had several co-counsel working with him on the file, relate to not only the B.C. Rail case but also to aspects of the police investigation known as Project Everywhichway. Those costs include the prosecution of Dave Basi, one of two former ministerial aides who pleaded guilty in the B.C. Rail case, in connection with a land deal on Vancouver Island involving the removal of farmland from the Agricultural Land Reserve.
They also include the prosecution of former Victoria police officer Ravinder Dosanjh for attempting to obstruct justice and payments made to Berardino for providing advice to police during the December 2003 police raid on the B.C. legislature.
There have been another $2.39 million for “other legal services,” according to the government’s public affairs bureau.
The province’s share of the RCMP costs has been $686,000. Court costs come to $234,000 and corrections costs have amounted to $40,000.
In October last year Basi and his co-accused Bob Virk pleaded guilty to breaches of trust in connection with the $1 billion sale of B.C. Rail to CN. They received conditional sentences.
The B.C. Rail case has been one of the costliest trials in recent years in B.C. but is far less than the $102 million spent on the Robert Pickton serial murder case, or the $130 million spent on the Air India bombing case.
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.